‘Man, I really missed it!’
Second-year volunteer Tobin Johnson enjoys his Airedales’ hoop connection
By Kevin Taylor
Alma Schools
The road less traveled isn’t always the wrong fork in the road. Tobin Johnson made sure of that.
The second-year Alma volunteer assistant boys basketball coach knew he wanted to coach. But first, he had to know if basketball missed him, too.
When Johnson landed his current gig as Youth Pastor at Impact Church, he reached out to former Alma head coach Dominic Lincoln.
A 2015 Van Buren grad, Johnson pulled on his first Alma hoodie last year. It fit like a dream.
“I didn’t realize until last year with coach Lincoln, how much I missed being around the game,” Johnson said. “When I got out of college, I went four or five years where I went to one or two high school basketball games a year … I had grown up with it my whole life, (but) I just didn’t want to be there.”
One visit with Lincoln helped change his mind. “When Lincoln gave me that opportunity, I was like, ‘Man, I really missed it.’
“I enjoyed it.”
Johnson played collegiately at Arkansas Tech, but he did not pursue a coaching career after graduating.
“My dad (Torin Johnson) spent so much money on me getting me basketball knowledge and sending me to camps, I just wanted to give back,” Johnson explained. “I don’t ever see coaching as a job. The lord called me to be a youth pastor, and this is just my way to stay in the game.”
Last summer, after Lincoln took another job at Nettleton, Alma’s newest basketball coach, Cody Vaught, encouraged Johnson to stay with the staff.
“We’re thrilled to have him with us,” Vaught said. “He has a good relationship with the kids.”
At Impact Church (Hwy. 64), Johnson works with “12 to 15” Alma kids, including a couple of football players. “It’s really been an open door for me to be in the school, just for the church,” he said.
Last month, Johnson looked on in amazement as the Airedales pulled away for a 68-55 win over his former Van Buren team. The atmosphere that night at Charles B. Dyer Arena was electric.
“It’s definitely different,” he said. “You grow up, and they’re (Alma) the so-called enemy. It’s a big rivalry, but one thing I told Mr. Kirkendoll when I came was that these boys are my boys now. I’ll always love Van Buren and what they did for me, but being here in Alma, especially what the church has done for me …
“This is home now, and these are my boys.”
Last season’s squad finished 17-10 overall and grabbed the No. 3 seed from the 5A-West by finishing 9-5 in the hotly contested league.
This season’s been even better, with Alma running out to a 17-6 start and winning six of its first seven conference games.
“I learned there are two different coaching styles, but that neither one of them is right nor wrong,” Johnson said. “Everybody has their own coaching style. One might be more relaxed, and one might be more fundamental. That doesn’t mean either of them is right or wrong. But I do appreciate both. Coach Lincoln let me get my foot in the door, and Coach Vaught allowed me to stay around. I’ve learned a lot from both of them, just on how to treat kids, and how different styles of coaching can really connect with the kids.
“You go from one really relaxed coach to one who is more structured. But you still have to be able to connect to those kids and keep them engaged.”
Not unlike his former high school coach, Randy Lloyd, and his former college coach, Chad Cline.
“Coach Lloyd was more fundamentally structured,” Johnson said. “There were a lot of shooting drills; a lot of defensive drills. Of course, we watched a little bit of film before each game.”
Johnson’s first memories of Tucker Coliseum are a bit blurred from all the running he did.
“They ran you until you couldn’t run anymore,” he said. “The team we had, we had a bunch of tall, lanky kids who would run up and down the court, and that’s really how we got going. My sophomore year, we went 26-and-6, and we just ran up and down the court.”
